Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
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Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our
farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country
.
—William Jennings Bryan, “Cross of Gold” speech, July 9, 1896
Although most consumers—eaters—view food first and foremost as the sustenance necessary for life, Big
Business thinks of our kitchens and stomachs as profit centers. The unwavering determination by the leaders
of a handful of powerful multinational corporations to concentrate ownership and control of the food pro-
duction and delivery systems has created unprecedented consolidation down the entire food chain. Food and
agricultural products have been reduced to a form of currency on income statements that cause a rise or fall
of quarterly profits. The worth of these products is measured on the return on investment, or as an opportun-
ity for mergers or acquisitions, that drive the strategy of the parent company. Their value is described in a
Wall Street-speak of deals, synergies, diversification, and “blockbuster game changers.”
Even hedge funds, those poorly regulated firms that played a role in causing the recent financial
crisis, have become some of the largest investors in food companies, farmland, and agricultural products.
These firms invest the money of high-wealth individuals and institutions into broad segments of the eco-
nomy—including food and agriculture. They have speculated in food commodity markets (contributing to
price spikes in corn and soybeans) and bought restaurant chains (Dunkin' Donuts), and are buying up farm-
land in the United States and the developing world. A private investment company even owns Niman Ranch,
the firm that pioneered producing pork more sustainably.
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Hedge funds have been big proponents of grabbing land—they have bought farmland worldwide—to
capitalize on expectations of profitability from the catastrophic impacts of climate change on agriculture.
The dramatic increase in the price of land in the U.S. Midwest over the past few years has led the president
of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City to warn about the crash that could result from a farmland bubble.
The U.S. Senate's Agriculture Committee warns that “distortions in financial markets” will catch the coun-
try by surprise again.
This financialization of food and farming has wreaked havoc on the natural world. The long list of the
consequences of industrialized agriculture includes the polluting of lakes, rivers, streams, and marine eco-
systems with agrochemicals, excess fertilizer, and animal waste. Nutrient runoff (nitrogen and phosphorus)
from row crops and animal factory farms, one of the foremost causes of the conditions that starve water-
ways and the ocean of oxygen, is creating massive dead areas of the ocean, such as one at the mouth of the
Mississippi River the size of the state of New Jersey. Planting and irrigating row crops has caused serious
erosion, as irrigation and rainwater wash the topsoil away at the rate of 1.3 billion tons per year. And as soil
scientists are fond of saying, “No soil, no life.”
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